


Lionlimb

by feroxargentea



Category: due South
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Found Families, Hospital Setting, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Post-Canon, due South Seekrit Santa Challenge, epic amounts of hand-holding, ghosts as matchmakers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-08-23 02:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16610540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: For the last six months, Fraser hadn’t so much as heard Ray’s voice. Vanished into a new undercover assignment, Ray might as well have been in Timbuktu, might as well have been on the moon, might as well have been——might as well have been dead, or so Fraser had thought. Now he knew it wasn’t the same at all.





	Lionlimb

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wagnetic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wagnetic/gifts).



> Written for Wagnetic for due South Seekrit Santa 2018. With thanks to alltoseek and alcyone for beta, and to cj2017 and verushka70 for medical expertise.

* * *

 

_“Ladies and gentlemen, mesdames et messieurs, I’d like to welcome you aboard this Air Canada flight to Chicago. I apologize for the late departure of your flight this morning, which was due to…”_

Fraser leaned back against his seat, letting the pilot’s excuses wash over him as he watched the endless wisps of cloud seething across the plane’s wing and re-forming in its wake. He’d been delayed at the detachment as he dropped Diefenbaker off, delayed in Whitehorse while the runway was cleared, and delayed once more in Calgary, for reasons that hardly mattered now. Haste, at this juncture, would be as futile as regret.

The land passing far below him glinted bright with snow and brighter with meltwater, catching the sunlight between the clouds. It was a full year since spring had last crept across the Territories, bringing an end to Fraser’s own tardy Franklin expedition. A year since the snow had turned treacherously soft and the sled’s runners lost the smoothness of their flow. A year since Ray had packed his borrowed clothes away in Fraser’s linen chest and bought a ticket back to Chicago. Fraser had continued to note the turning of the seasons with a distant pleasure, storing up by long habit all his discoveries—the tracery of frost on a spider’s web, a stand of larches flame-bright against the autumn sky, the tracks of a lynx as it stalked a snowshoe hare—to be recounted in warmth and leisure at day’s end, until he remembered there was no one left to tell.

Now the ice was starting to break up again, the snowbanks dwindling in the warmth of spring. Fraser had been shoveling the community center’s driveway clear when old Mrs. Jones called round to give him the message from the detachment, and his knees crumpled, pitching him into the rotting snow.

For the last six months, he hadn’t so much as heard Ray’s voice. Vanished into a new undercover assignment, Ray might as well have been in Timbuktu, might as well have been on the moon, might as well have been—

—might as well have been dead, or so Fraser had thought. Now he knew it wasn’t the same at all.

 

* * *

 

Fraser paused in front of the hospital’s information board while he examined its color-coded map and tried to marshal his thoughts; it would be unacceptable to allow emotion to cloud them now. The ER was sited right by the main entrance, but he doubted it was worthwhile enquiring there. Ray would in all likelihood have been moved by now, if he was still in the hospital at all.

Fraser checked his bearings and started down the corridor, trying not to think of the many morgues he’d visited over the years, the many chapels of rest with their ornate caskets and cloying floral scent. He didn’t want to picture Ray lying silent and still in a place like that. He _couldn’t_ picture it; the whole scenario seemed absurd. Ray—the living, breathing Ray he remembered—wouldn’t have lasted thirty seconds before sitting up and laughing, calling “Had you fooled there, Frase!” or “Man, I got a hangover bigger’n Texas. Wanna go get takeout?”

Fraser’s steps slowed until he came to a halt in the middle of the corridor. The morgue, he realized, would have limited opening hours, for the convenience of its staff if not its other occupants. Even if Ray was still there, it might be too late to see him. Taking a deep breath, Fraser turned and went back to the front desk.

“Excuse me, my name is Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” he said, showing his badge. “I’m looking for Ray Kowalski. Could you check your records?”

“Okay, is he an inpatient?” The receptionist tapped at his keyboard. “K-O-W-A-L-S-K-I. Um, it’s not coming up, sorry.”

“He's, uh…” Fraser cleared his throat. “Did you check the morgue, too?”

The receptionist shot him a quick glance and hit some more keys. “Ah, right. Reynard Kowalski, yeah, he’s…yeah. You’re in luck, the ME’s guys haven’t picked him up yet. Wait here a minute and I’ll get the morgue attendant to come fetch you.”

“No, not Reynard,” Fraser said, wincing. “He’s—he was Raymond. Stanley Raymond.”

“Huh. It says Reynard here. Date of birth November 12th 1931?”

“No, he—”

“Fraser? _Fraser!”_ a familiar voice called, and Fraser looked up to see Francesca Vecchio hurrying towards him, her eyes reddened and her makeup smudged.

“Francesca?”

“Oh, thank God you made it!” She flung her arms round him, burying her face in his coat. “I didn’t know if you’d…I mean, it’s a long way, it’s a real long way, I know that, but…” She leaned back to peer up at him doubtfully. “You did get my message, right? I called like twenty times. I called the detachment, I called the airline, I called O’Hare, I called the taxi firms, I called Avis, I called Hertz, I called—and what’s _with_ that, anyway? You don’t have a cell phone?”

Fraser blinked, because no, of course he didn’t have a cell phone. He’d never needed one. He could always just hold out his hand and Ray would pass his phone over without comment. And, as with so many things concerning Ray, Fraser hadn’t wanted to accept that that possibility was gone.

“Sorry, I…I didn’t even think of hiring a car,” he said. “I took the bus.”

Francesca was staring at him. “Oh my God, you don’t _know?_ I mean, which message did you _get?”_

“That he was…that Ray was…”

“Oh my God, oh my God, Fraser, he’s alive, he’s—”

And just like that, Fraser’s knees gave way again and he sat down hard, hitting the scuffed linoleum with a thud. He lowered his head to clear his vision, bracing himself on unsteady hands. Francesca was still babbling, although her words were hardly registering.

“I mean, he’s only just alive, they said not to get our hopes up or anything—and God, I tried to call you, I tried so many times, I swear I did, ’cause the stupid Feds got his name wrong. They told the Lieu one thing and registered him here under another, and when I called the hospital I just asked for Ray Kowalski like anyone _would_ do, and okay that might’ve been dumb but no one told me he had undercover names, and I’m not _psychotic—”_

“Psychic,” Fraser said. “I know you’re…” He trailed off, covering his eyes. “Francesca, could you kindly just tell me where he is?”

She crouched down, clasping his shoulders. “Oh, Fraser, I’m so sorry. He’s in surgery, they took him back into surgery, but they said he probably wouldn’t make it. We’re waiting to hear, but…”

Fraser nodded, his jaw set. “Fine,” he said, shrugging off her grip and getting doggedly to his feet. “That’s fine, I can wait. Just tell me where to wait and I’ll wait.”

 

* * *

 

Night had come and gone before the nurses let Fraser into the ICU.

“Are you family?” they’d said, and then, “Sorry, but you’ll have to leave. You can’t wait here.”

He’d loitered instead in a nearby corridor, alternately sitting and pacing. After a while he’d gone to stand by the bank of elevators, holding the doors and directing a stream of lost visitors using the color-coded map still vivid in his memory. After he’d helped the same porter maneuver a gurney out of the elevator for the fifth time, the guy stopped to speak to one of the nurses by the ICU entrance, jerking his thumb back towards Fraser. The nurse eyed Fraser warily and then beckoned him over.

“You’re Ray Szkilnyk’s friend?” she said. “Come on, then. Keep your head down, and if anyone asks, you’re family.”

Now he sat, his head bowed, by a gown-clad body he hardly recognized. A mass of wires and surgical dressings obscured its outline, while most of the face was covered by bandages and a ventilator tube. Only the hands were familiar, the fingers cool and dry and unnaturally still in his grasp. Everything about Ray was still, except for the mechanized rise and fall of his chest and the drip-drip-drip of his IV line.

“It’s your basic car-versus-pedestrian,” the tired-eyed nurse told Fraser, when she saw he really wanted to know. “Double tib-fib first, from the bumper. They’re a mess but they’re fixable. Sorry, they’re the bones in the lower legs. Then abdo injuries, so he’s minus his spleen. Then the skull hits the ground, and, well…” She checked Ray’s monitors and adjusted his IV. “The induced coma might help, but there isn’t much else we can do. It’s up to him now.”

There wasn’t much else Fraser could do, either, so he simply sat there, hour after hour, clutching Ray’s hand and praying with the words his grandmother had taught him. They were the wrong prayers for Ray—the wrong faith entirely—but they were all he had, and he hoped the same God might be listening, after all.

 

* * *

 

 _“‘Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee,’”_ Fraser murmured, watching the stillness of Ray’s lashes, dark smudges on his winter-pale skin. _“‘Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man in me or, most weary, cry_ I can no more.’”

As ever, the words brought no reaction, just the steady beeping of the monitors and the soft click and hiss of the ventilator that had been keeping Ray alive for days now. He hadn’t deteriorated, but neither had he improved enough for his medical team to risk lifting his sedation. From time to time his arms would jerk, but those were random movements, the nurses had told Fraser, not a sign of consciousness. “Keep talking to him, though,” they’d said. “Try reading to him, if you like. It can’t hurt to try.”

And Fraser had tried, but he couldn’t concentrate on the pages, couldn’t keep from glancing up to check for life. He didn’t need a book for Hopkins, though. Those words came unbidden, whether he wanted them or not.

 _“‘I can,’”_ he continued, chafing Ray’s fingers, obscurely comforted by the familiar crookedness of the thumb with its misaligned joints, _“‘can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.’”_

Ray, when awake, had scoffed at poetry. “It’s all footwork, no punch,” he’d protested. “It’s like a perp who spins you all kinds of shit instead of saying, ‘Yeah I done it, here’s the gun.’ That guy of yours, that Hopkins guy, he should just say what he means. _‘Man, my life sucks. God’s such an asshole.’”_

And maybe Ray had a point. When he was exhausted, though, when he was lying half-asleep after a hard day’s sledding on the Franklin trip, he’d huddled close to hear the verses Fraser spoke in the darkness, and he hadn’t laughed.

 

* * *

 

When his week’s leave was up, Fraser phoned his sergeant with the intention of calling in sick, but when her warm, homely voice came on the line he forgot his cover story and told her the truth instead, or as much of it as was his to tell.

She tutted in sympathy. “Oh, the poor fellow! I don’t suppose you know when you’ll be back?”

“I’m sorry, sir, it’s hard to say.”

“Well, I can grant short-term emergency leave, of course, and in the case of family I could apply for extended unpaid leave on your behalf. What relation did you say he was?”

Fraser twisted the cold metal of the phone flex between his fingers. “He’s…he used to be my work partner.”

“Oh. I see.” A long pause ensued, and then the sergeant cleared her throat. “Constable Fraser, I don’t believe you ever submitted your form 141-33B.”

“My form 141-33B?” He tried to cast his mind back. “I think I did, sir. It should be in my personnel file.”

“On the contrary, Constable, I think you’ll find you didn’t. I’d advise you to obtain a fresh one from the nearest consulate and fax it over to me before five p.m. today, stating clearly whom you wish to nominate as your next of kin. Is that understood?”

“Ah,” he said, the light dawning. “Yes, that’s understood. Thank you, sir, I’ll do that.”

Afterwards he wondered why he’d never thought of it himself. It was such a simple thing. He might not be Ray’s family, but Ray—with a single faxed signature—became his.

 

* * *

 

It didn’t surprise Fraser greatly, on returning to Ray’s room, to find his father standing by the window. Given his father’s fondness for offering unwanted advice in hopeless situations, the only surprise was that it had taken him so long to show up.

“Hello, son,” he said, turning from the window. “I thought you might be in need of company.”

Fraser sat down in his usual chair beside Ray’s bed. “To be honest, Dad, ghosts are the last thing I need right now.”

“Hmph. Fair enough.” His dad adjusted his hat, tipping a cascade of illusory snow from its brim. “Hospitals aren’t exactly my favorite places either. It’s all the antiseptic, makes me twitchy. Something smells good in here, though—did you bring dinner with you?”

“No, but Ray’s mom did.” Fraser indicated the steaming, foil-wrapped parcel on the side table. “She can’t feed him, so I’m apparently the nearest substitute. Be my guest, if you’re hungry.”

“Mmm, I wish I could. Mothers, eh?” His dad leaned against the window frame, gazing out at the darkness beyond. “Ah, it feels good to commune with the living for a change. It’s been hectic out there lately. Too many lost souls wandering about between life and death. They’re like tourists in the wilderness: no maps, no compasses, and no damned clue how to use ’em if they had ’em.” He poked at the double glazing, his fingertips vanishing through its surface. “We try to help them sometimes, me and some of the others. Try to point them on their way, if we can figure out where that is. Trouble is, you draw a map one day and the next day it’s all shifted. Damned tricky place, the borderlands.”

Fraser nodded wearily. “So I recall.”

His dad came over to Ray’s bed and stooped to examine him. “Bit scrawny, isn’t he, this Yank of yours? What is he, a bantamweight?”

“He’s _sick!”_ Fraser snapped. “Come back when he’s on his feet! And for your information, he’s a middleweight, an excellent boxer. He could hike a hundred miles and still have the energy to punch your lights out.”

His dad held up a hand. “Steady there, son, hold your horses! All I meant was, he looked sturdier back in the borderlands.”

Fraser stared. “Wait, you saw him there? Was he…was he…”

His dad peered into Ray’s face, checking one closed-lidded eye and then the other, as if Ray might wake at any second. “Oh, he wasn’t lost, son. He knew exactly where he was. Some of the folks out there, it’s not that they don’t know _where_ they are, they just don’t know _who_ they are. Confusing thing, life—or is it death?” He straightened up and patted Fraser’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Benton, I sent him back this way. I daresay he’ll turn up yet. As you said, he’s a fighter.”

 

* * *

 

Fraser wasn’t there when Ray woke up. The doctors lifted the sedation, as planned, with Ray’s parents in attendance. It was half an hour later when Barbara Kowalski’s tearstained face reappeared round the door to his room.

“Fraser?” she asked hesitantly. “He, um, he keeps asking for you. Would you mind…”

The room was crowded with people, but when Fraser hurried after her through the doorway he saw only Ray, his arms flailing and his face contorted with distress as he tried to fight his way out from the wires and tubes surrounding him.

“Ray!” Fraser called, pushing his way to the bed. He gathered him into his arms, holding him close and cradling his bandaged skull. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Oh God, you’re okay…”

“Wh…I…uh…Frase…?” The words were jumbled and incoherent, but after a few seconds Ray stopped struggling and let himself be held, let Fraser hug him closer and stroke circles on his back.

“Shh, shh, it’s okay, I’ve got you, you’re safe now. There now, it’s okay. Try to slow your breathing for me, Ray. Slow breaths, in and out.” Fraser’s own breath was coming in uneven gulps as he tried to steady Ray’s. He rocked him gently for a long time, murmuring meaningless words of comfort into his hair, until he felt Ray’s frantic grip on him relax a little. “That’s good, Ray, you’re doing fine. I need to lay you down so you can rest now, okay?”

With shaking fingers Fraser untangled the IV lines and eased Ray back onto the pillows. Ray’s gaze, locked on his, was still bewildered, but it was full of that answering spark, too; that living intelligence Fraser had thought was lost forever.

“Oh thank God,” he whispered. “Thank _God…”_

“Huh…I…Frase?” Ray mumbled, knocking his oxygen probe loose as he reached out clumsily.

“It’s okay, Ray,” Fraser said, taking his hand. “I’m right here, I promise. I’m not going anywhere.”

 

* * *

 

“Ray?” the nursing assistant called through Ray’s door. “Ray, your boyfriend’s here.”

Fraser coughed hurriedly, stepping round her and letting the door swing shut. “That’s, um…sorry, Ray, she might have picked up the wrong idea.” He sat down in his usual place and busied himself straightening Ray’s sheet, tucking the edges in. He was so much of a fixture in the ward by now that all the staff knew him by sight, even the agency nurses. “Her name’s Maria, I thought she was Mexican but it turns out she’s Colombian, and she’s a qualified structural engineer but she can earn more as a nurse's aide here than as an engineer there, which seems crazy but apparently it’s true, so she’s sending money home so that, um…” He trailed off, realizing that he’d been babbling and that Ray was regarding him with amusement. He ducked his head, embarrassed.

“Good for her,” Ray said, holding out his hand pointedly until Fraser gave in and took it. “Look, I’m not actually brain-damaged, okay, Frase? I mean, yeah, I probably am, I’ve been boxing for twenty years, but most of it isn’t _new_ damage. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Fraser said, nodding. Ray had certainly been confused when he first regained consciousness, but his cognitive impairment had diminished in the days that followed. Despite some lingering patchiness in his memories, he’d handled the previous day’s FBI interviews confidently enough, insisting only that Fraser remain in the room. “Because he deserves to know what I’ve been doing the last few months, that’s why,” he’d said. And indeed, although some of the details had been painful for them both, Fraser had taken a certain satisfaction in hearing that the crime boss who’d driven straight at Ray had been charged with a dozen felonies in addition to attempted murder.

“So I’m not damaged, and I’m not stupid, either. I get that you’re trying to protect me, Frase, but you don’t need to treat me like I can’t make my own decisions.” Ray hesitated, glancing up at his IV stand. “Okay, so I might be kind of drunk. The morphine, it, uh”—he curled a fingertip across Fraser’s palm—“makes me want things that’d probably hurt _way_ too much right now.”

“It... _oh!”_ Fraser stared down at their linked hands, feeling himself flushing to the tips of his ears. When he looked up again, Ray’s grin made his breath catch.

“I know, I know, we gotta wait till they let me out. But we’re on the same page, right? Or if I’m wrong, tell me I’m wrong.” Ray paused, his gaze sharp and challenging. “Yeah, I figured there’s a reason you’re still here. And maybe you can’t talk about it sober and I can’t talk about it sober, so thank God one of us is high as a kite.”

Fraser nodded again, not trusting his voice.

“Plus,” Ray continued, “if nearly dying taught me anything, it’s what matters in life and what doesn’t. So I’m done with the whole Kalisiak thing, the Szkilnyk thing, the whatever-the-hell-else they’re calling me today. Done with being what other people want me to be. From now on, I’m just gonna be me. Okay?”

 

* * *

 

_“Ladies and gentlemen, mesdames et messieurs, I’d like to welcome you aboard this Air Canada flight to Yellowknife. I apologize for the late departure of your flight this morning. This was due to a late-arriving aircraft on runway two…”_

Fraser propped Ray’s crutches against his armrest and checked that the tray-tables were securely fastened.

“Takeoff will be any minute now,” he said. “Are you sure about this? Last chance to change your mind.”

Ray shrugged and tapped his legs. “I got more metal than bone in here, and snowbanks are softer than sidewalks. If I’m gonna be falling on my ass every ten feet, might as well do it on snow.”

“I’m serious, Ray!”

“So am I.” Ray spread his new coat over their knees, stroking its fur-lined hood. “Remember way back on the Muldoon case, when I said I wanted an adventure?”

“Yes, I remember. I did my best to oblige.”

“Yeah, and it was fun, it was great, but I didn’t mean a ten-week vacation with a bunch of borrowed gear. I meant _this,_ Frase. I meant _you.”_ He slid his hand under the coat and took Fraser’s in a warm, steady grip. “I got a second chance here, and I’m not gonna waste it. So are you with me or not?”

Fraser glanced out at the rain-lashed airfield and then back at Ray’s face, which was lit with a fierce determination. He felt the plane shudder as it started to accelerate down the runway.

“You know I am,” he said, curling his fingers around Ray’s. “Always.”

 

 


End file.
